Update: I found video from the strictly lindy finals! It was a phrased battle and ended with an all-skate. Video embedded below...
I'm still trying to get the prelims on YouTube, so come back and I might have that posted as well.
I just returned from Austin, Texas yesterday where I was competing in the Lone Star Championships. I had never really been to Texas except for my drive through Amarillo when I moved back to the east coast, so I figured it was time to explore this corner of the country. I had also started meeting some cool dancers from the area and figured this lindy event was worth the trip. My good friend Stephen Grimes wanted to go as well because one of his good friends lives in Austin and it would be a good chance for him to try his hand in competing. So off we went last Thursday into the part of Texas locals call "weird." Or as Austinites say... "not really Texas."
We spent the first part of our day checking out a portion of downtown, checking into the hotel and enjoying the 80 degree weather this capital city offered us. Our first stop was a pub on the famous 6th Street where we enjoyed a local beer and an excellent burger. I can't recall the name of the joint, but the live music was great and we got to see a guy so drunk he fell off his bar stool...at 1 in the afternoon! After lunch I walked around with my camera while Steve took off for his friends place just north of the city. I was able to shoot some fantastic shots of the capitol building, have a coffee while sitting outside and just enjoy some down time before the weekend of dancing. The above photo was shot Thursday evening just before I went to dinner downtown and off to the opening dance.
Friday was pretty nice because the weather remained in the 80s, which was perfect to explore even more of the city. The photo below comes from my afternoon of wandering. I know some of the locals hate this condo tower because they think it takes away from the character of the city. But it was my favorite building downtown and one of the more impressive condo towers I've seen in the many cities I've visited.
Friday night was the official opening of the Lone Star Championships and it included several competitions. The event was held at the Texas State Women's Federation building, which was a massive mansion with a large ballroom along the back of the building. I didn't have any comps Friday night, but it was a good chance to catch up with friends like Mike Roberts, Laura Glaess, Carl Nelson, Teni Lopez-Cardenas, Andrew Munoz, Rye Crowen, Andrew Thigpen, Yossef Mendelssohn and many others.
Saturday was the real meat of the schedule for me because I had two comps scheduled. The first was the Advanced Jack and Jill. This is where you enter as an individual and are randomly paired with a partner. Overall I felt it was a good competition but I knew the chances of making the finals would be tough based on the number of amazing leads entered. Needless to say, I wasn't one of the 5 (or six, can't remember) selected. The good news in that was the final were Sunday, so even if I had made it, my flight was at 7 a.m. Sunday morning.
The next comp was the strictly lindy where you enter as a couple. My original plan was to do it with a friend from New York, but I wasn't sure she'd make it to Texas. So I asked my friend Beth Hartzel from Nashville if she'd do it with me. She said yes and so later that afternoon Beth and I proceeded to kill it in the prelims. Here's where I need to make a special note. I've often heard about dancers finding a connection with their partner and getting into a "special" zone during competitions. I've been wondering when my time would come. When would I feel that connection where everything you do just works? Well this is when it happened for me. Beth and I were just on. I can't really explain anything about the feeling except we nailed every move we tried and just timed everything perfectly. When the fast song came on, we did about 8 swing outs in a row as the crowd cheered louder each time. We didn't know if we'd make finals or not (again, the competitions was amazing), but we both knew we just danced our asses off.
While at dinner, a local dancer says to me "hey, you made finals in the strictly." I was like... uh, sweet!!! So Saturday night Beth and I competed in a phrased battle style finals where we again proceeded to nail everything we tried. My only complaint was being the first couple out to start it, but otherwise I had an absolute blast! I can't recall another competition where I've felt so comfortable on the floor. Everything at Lone Star just came together for a perfect night of lindy. I also can't thank Beth and Yossef enough for being there. Hopefully I'll find some video of my dances soon. In the meantime, here's a photo from the finals...
Overall Austin is a great city with great people. And the Lone Star Championships was a well run and well attended event. I will most certainly be back next year!
This posting is going away from my typical musings about nightlife, dancing and photography. But I came across an interesting story today about a Dallas girls basketball coach being fired after his team defeated another Dallas school 100-0.
The Covenant School, a private Christian school in Dallas, fired coach Micah Grimes after he sent an email disagreeing with school administrators that the win was an embarrassment. The school has a response to the game on their web site here.
So it got me wondering, what exactly is the problem here? According to the reports, there are no mercy rules in place within this particular athletic conference. Not to mention, how can one participate in sports to achieve a certain amount of success and then be told its embarrassing when that success is attained? I'd like to know what others think. We all joke about the college football games when teams like Paducah Bible College try to play Ohio State and lose 90-0. But those teams are usually paid a handsome amount of money to provide the typical powerhouses with glorified walk-throughs. But what about high school kids? My state has mercy rules in affect after scores get out of control. But isn't there some sort of conflicted message you're sending these kids when you tell them to win, win, win, then fire a coach when they do. We see guys like Tommy Tuberville fired at Auburn after going 34-16 in his previous 4 seasons. We see a turnover in coaching jobs that looks more like a shift change at your local McDonald's.
So what's the right thing to do here? Fire the coach because his girls played a masterful game? Or step up efforts to institute a mercy rule in the league to prevent something like this in the future. No one wants to lose 100-0. A bagel in any game sucks. But what's a coach to do if he can't keep his job even when he wins???
Unless you live under a rock, you'll know Barack Obama was sworn in as our 44th President yesterday. You'll also know that because of where I live and work, I had a front row seat for all the festivities. I wish I could tell you that I had a front row seat to the actual inauguration or that I scored tickets to one of the "official" balls. But no such luck on my first and what will probably go down as the biggest inauguration in American history.
But the 5 day weekend wasn't without excitement and chaos. We started the inauguration celebration off with Dan Kelly's birthday. His actual birthday was Monday, Jan. 19th, but we flew our good friend Mike Morley into town from Charlotte and started things off Friday night at Asian Spice and The Muse Nightclub. Below is a photo of Dervon and I at Muse...
Things really started to pick up energy-wise in the city on Saturday when it seemed as though most of the inauguration tourists arrived. Normal city streets went from the usual DC traffic to a parking lot of taxi's and buses. Sidewalks became littered with vendors hawking everything from buttons and hats to toilet seats and recliners. Most restaurants were booked solid and the most average bars had lines to get inside. On top of it all, it was about 10 degrees outside, so we all froze.
On Sunday I got the chance to drive down to the mall and check out the capitol building and the plethora of news agencies lining the streets near the monuments. I laughed and said "we're the center of the world right now." But it was truth. The following are photos from that day. Notice the MSNBC mobile studio and all the tourists trying to get on camera...
Inauguration Day was spent waking up early and doing a phone interview with the morning show of WKRN Nashville. A good friend produces the morning show there and they wanted to talk to actual DC residents to get their perspective on the chaos that enveloped DC. After the phoner, I did my walk into the office. Let me explain how this usually works. I walk about 8 blocks down 7th Street and roll into my office building on the corner of 6th and E streets. Not inauguration day. Half the neighborhood was in lockdown because 6 of the official balls were a block away at the convention center. Most of downtown was off-limits to vehicles. Oh, and two million people converged on the city to hear Obama's inaugural address. Walking down regular streets was impossible.
So I worked hard posting content from the swearing in, the luncheon and the parade. I did manage to sneak away from my office for about 30 mins to grab coffee and snap a few photos. Those are below...
We finally wrapped up our inaugural celebration with the Black & White ball at The Jam Cellar, our usual Tuesday evening dance. The best part of the Jam Cellar ball was their first ever inauguration jack and jill contest. This is where you enter the contest and get randomly paired with another dancer. The idea is you should be able to social dance with anyone well, so it keeps you on your toes. You don't have a routine or organized moves. You just dance to whatever is thrown your way. Lucky for me I drew Kelly as my partner. (Kelly and I have competed quite a bit together, so we had an unfair advantage...but that's the risks of Jack and Jills) Long story short, Kelly and I won the contest. I got a pass to the Jam Cellar and Kelly decided to take the entire chocolate Capitol Building. I didn't even get a taste of it. What is it with women and chocolate? Anyway, here are some photos from the Jam Cellar ball...
Overall I'd say the inauguration weekend was a massive success. I got to see celebrities like Blair Underwood, Bon Jovi, Alicia Keys and Ann Hathaway. I saw our national mall fit close to 2 million people on the lawn. I saw U2, Springsteen and Queen Latifah perform in front of the Lincoln Memorial. I saw a nascar-like assortment of Obama souveniers. I saw one naked guy, lots of trash and lots and lots of security. And best of all, I saw Obama's motorcade roll through the city Saturday evening...reminding me of how amazing it is living in the heart of American politics.
Update: So I ask the guy at the front desk of our building last night about the barricades and he hands me a paper. Turns out Obama is hosting one of the big "official" inauguration parties at the convention center. And since it's a block away, secret service is putting our entire neighborhood in lock down.
What does this mean? Well is simply means there will be no cars on the streets and no street parking. It also means we'll have limited access to drive in and out but we'll have to show ID that proves we live in the neighborhood. The same goes for pedestrians who wish to walk through. In other words, you can't just stroll through.
I'm not too worried about it. I have the proper DC ID and it's really only for one day. And just think, Obama and Michelle will be dancing just one block from my condo. Sweet!
Good morning Washington! So the preparations for next week's inauguration are starting to show up in my neighborhood. On my morning walk to work, I noticed a ton of concrete barricades have been dropped off on the sidewalks. I'm not really sure what they are intended for since I don't believe our neighborhood is one going on lock-down. And I doubt they plan to close down the streets since our area is close enough to the mall for parking but not within security parameters. My only guess is they could be used for crowd control, but we'll have to see.
Either way, it's pretty exciting seeing all of the action around town. There's a buzz in the streets with activity and any time you see flashing lights, you start to wonder if you'll get a glimpse of our new president. Maybe I'll get lucky since his transition team is housed in a building right across the street from my office. Regardless of seeing Obama in person or not, DC is quite literally the place to be right now. Love it!
Some of you have probably noticed the acronym ELHC floating around the past few days and wondered what it stood for. Like a number of Lindy Hop events, it follows the same format other events like ALHC, ILHC, ULHS, etc., etc. But ELHC is not one lindy event. It stands for "Every Lindy Hopper Counts." ELHC is a propaganda video that surfaced at Lindy Focus in response to a daily late night video being shown by some of the Lindy Focus instructors. Let me explain the details...
Like most dance events, Lindy Focus had late nights. Late nights tend to start around 1 a.m. and can last until sunrise or a set time like 4 or 5 a.m. Some are heavy with blues, while others are Lindy Hop til you drop type dances. Lindy Focus had a large room dedicated to Lindy Hop and a small room for blues. To be honest, the blues room was just a place to go to set up your hookups for the night. (it's not really a secret anymore ya know)
So in order to encourage dancers to participate in late night, instructors Dave Madison and Andrew Sutton decided they would hold a count at the end of the night. They would count how many people were from which city and the next day they would announce it at the camp meeting. In the end, the city who had the most dancers at late night got recognition. Dave and Andrew also shot humorous videos each night that parodied the late nights and the things that go down past 5 a.m. The videos were a riot!
Long story short, DC had been killing it each night. We had a solid number of folks in for the event and were representing quite well in the comps and staying out all hours of the night. We also had the reputation for hosting the most parties in our rooms, which always seemed to be ours. So on the third night, we decided DC would take over the late night. We had about 12 people in the room around 5:30 a.m. At one point we were even doing the worm and dancing to Boy's 2 Men. Hey, there's not much more you can do at 6 a.m. to keep going. So at 6:10 a.m., Dave Madison strolls in and takes the count. DC rolled!
The next day we find out the Dave and Andrew came back in the room at 6:30 and said "now that the posers are gone, we're going to take a second count." At the camp meeting, DC was counted as having only 3 people in the room...two were in the DJ booth. As Stephen Grimes said... "not cool man!!!" He actually wasn't that serious, and we did laugh at the movie that was shown that parodied the people sleeping in the counter of the room just to get counted. But as true dancers at any dance event, we decided it was time to get even. So we began to circulate word of ELHC. Some thought it was an underground comp. Some wondered if a new event was happening this year in DC. But others knew it was a viral campaign to turn around and poke fun at our light night counting instructors.
So we got to work early that evening planning our video. We used various characters from the event and pulled off what I think was one of the funniest little ploys I've seen at a lindy event. The next night we showed it to Dave and Andrew and they agreed to show it as that nights "late night" video. The entire Lindy Focus crowd laughed in hysterics at the parody of Dave Madison and his raver pants. And using Davis on his knees as Andrew Sutton (who is decidedly shorter than Dave) was priceless, specially when they held hands. So what you see below is the video that made waves at Lindy Focus and could be the start of a tradition going forward.
Side note: We want to thank Dave Madison, Andrew Sutton and Andrew Thigpen for being such good sports and supporting us in showing the video at Lindy Focus. Seriously, it was all in good fun and I think we all had an absolute blast producing it.
I've been a bit out of the loop for the last week because I've been in Asheville, NC since the day after Christmas for Lindy Focus. LF is a six-day dance camp and competition that attracts some of the best dancers from around the country. This was my first year at Lindy Focus and I was joined by fellow DC dancers Steve Grimes, Manuel Ferdinandus, Ann Mony and Jerry "The Godfather" Almonte. There were a bunch of other DC dancers in the mix, but that would be too many to list.
So we left DC on Friday, Dec. 26th and drove down to Ashville. The drive took about 9 hours because we made a visit to The Green Bean, one of my favorite coffeehouses in Greensboro. By the time we arrived to the hotel we were a bit loopy but ready to dance our butts off. The entire event was absolutely amazing. It was basically eat, drink, and sleep Lindy Hop. Heck, we really didn't even sleep.
I competed in the advanced jack and jill on Saturday evening. I had some great partners but it definitely wasn't one of my better comps. Oh well, that's life in the competitive dance world and there's always next time. Our roomie Ann also competed in the JnJ and the Strictly Lindy comp and kicked some serious tail in a final that included her and Terrace Ellis doing battle with Carl Nelson and Teni Lopez-Cardenas. All I can say is... HOT!!!
The highlight of the camp though, has got to be the creation of ELHC. I'm planning to post about it just after this post goes live but for now here are some photos from the event. Two are from a night when Mr. Grimes and I snuck away from the hotel to shoot the downtown Asheville skyline with the sun setting behind the mountains. The final two photos are from New Year's Eve when myself, Steve, Manny, Amy Tran, Laura Jackson, Davis Thurber, Marc-Andre Vachon and Gina Helf all enjoyed a nice dinner at Table in downtown Asheville. Enjoy...
Welcome to urban marinade...a blog that lets you stew in the cultural crock pot of Washington, DC. I'm here to rant and rave about anything and everything in my little urban world. Generally speaking, that includes nightlife, photography, dancing and DC urban development. So there!
